Asset Growth
Calculate the asset growth of Cooper, Gulen and Schill (2008): the change in total assets over a year relative to the total assets at the start of it.
Cooper, Gulen and Schill find that the growth of a company’s total assets predicts its returns strongly and negatively: the companies that grow their assets the most earn far lower returns over the following years than those that grow them the least, more so than the book-to-market ratio, size or past returns predict. Asset growth captures every form of investment (capital expenditure, acquisitions, working capital) and of the financing behind it, and is the investment measure of the CMA (conservative minus aggressive) factor of the Fama-French five-factor model.
The formula is as follows:
\[\text{Asset Growth} = (\text{Total Assets} - \text{Beginning Total Assets}) / \text{Beginning Total Assets}\]The total assets are those at the end of the period and the beginning total assets those a year earlier: the end of the year before with annual data and four quarters back with quarterly data, so quarterly values are year over year. Beginning total assets of zero or less give NaN.
Also known as: total asset growth, investment, CMA investment, ASSETG.
Asset Growth in Python or via the MCP
Install the Finance Toolkit with:
pip install financetoolkit -U
Then call get_asset_growth as shown below.
from financetoolkit import Toolkit
toolkit = Toolkit(
["AAPL", "MSFT", "NVDA", "XOM"],
api_key="FINANCIAL_MODELING_PREP_KEY",
start_date="2021-01-01",
end_date="2025-12-31",
)
toolkit.ratios.get_asset_growth()
Or, after setting up the Finance Toolkit MCP, ask:
How fast did the total assets of Apple, Microsoft, Nvidia and ExxonMobil grow in each year from 2021 to 2025?
Which returns:
| 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AAPL | 0.0837 | 0.005 | -0.0005 | 0.0352 | -0.0157 |
| MSFT | 0.1078 | 0.0931 | 0.1292 | 0.2432 | 0.2086 |
| NVDA | 0.5348 | -0.068 | 0.596 | 0.6979 | nan |
| XOM | 0.0186 | 0.0889 | 0.0196 | 0.205 | -0.0099 |
Parameters
get_asset_growth accepts the following parameters.
| Parameter | Type | Description | Example |
|---|---|---|---|
rounding | int | None | The number of decimals to round the results to. Defaults to None, which uses the rounding of the Toolkit (4 unless set otherwise). | 2 |
growth | bool | Whether to calculate the growth of the ratios. Defaults to False. | True |
lag | int | list[int] | The lag to use for the growth calculation. Defaults to 1. | 4 |
compound | bool | Whether the growth is the compound annual growth rate over the lag (e.g. lag=5 for the five-year CAGR) instead of the total change. Defaults to False. | False |
standardize | bool | Whether to standardize (Z-Score) the result. When combined with growth=True, standardizes the growth values instead of the raw values. Defaults to False. | True |
trailing | int | The number of periods the total assets are compared over. E.g. 3 with annual data gives the growth over three years. Defaults to None, which uses a year: 4 quarters with quarterly data and 1 year with annual data. | 4 |